Location: Westbeth Gallery, 55 Bethune St, New York, NY 10014
Exhibition Dates: July 22-August 9, 2025, Wed.–Sun. 1-6pm
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 23, 6-9pm
Artist’s Talk: July 25, Saturday, 3-4:30pm
Closing Reception: August 9, Sunday, 4-6pm

Participating Artists:
Desirée Alvarez (NYC)
Sabra Booth (San Antonio, TX)
Margaret Craig (San Antonio, TX)
Diana Jensen (NYC)
Patricia Melvin (NYC)
Arthur Polendo (NYC)
Susan Rostow (NYC)
Sophie Sanders (NYC)
Doerte Weber (San Antonio, TX)

Note: Visitors are also invited to bring clean items, natural or otherwise, associated with rivers, for an audience participation installation. Instructions will be available at the gallery.

The group of artists in Two-Way River respond sensuously and conceptually to the
movement of rivers. Some reside in New York, and others are based in San Antonio, providing
comparisons between the Hudson River and waterways in South Central Texas. 

The Hudson estuary moves with the ocean’s tidal rhythms, its entire 153 miles from Troy to New York Harbor. It traverses Lenape, Mohican, and Mohawk homelands and is known by the Lenape as Muhheakantuck, “the river that flows both ways. This estuary embodies interconnectednessthrough its bidirectional movement, continuing to be a muse for visual artists, notably from the
eponymous Hudson River School painters until the present. The New York-based artists have
responded to the River, through diverse processes. They scavenge, upcycle, and luxuriate in its
surfaces.
    In comparison, the Texas-based artists in this exhibition reflect their specific environmental
concerns and the regional colors of a more rural, dry terrain.  San Antonio is known as the
“River City” due to its celebrated Riverwalk built during the Great Depression as a major Works
Progress Administration’s (WPA) project. These San Antonio artists weave together a complex
body of work that examines South Central Texas rivers on their vast journey to the Gulf of
Mexico, border concerns along the Rio Grande River, and broader implications for plastics in
our water supply. Tidal streams form in the lower reaches of the Texas rivers, reversing the
rivers’ direction as they do in the Hudson River. The San Antonio River’s source, called the Blue
Hole, just north of downtown San Antonio, sits on top of the Edward’s Aquifer’s artesian zones
and is one of the largest and purest sources for water in the world.

Throughout this multifaceted exhibition that features animations, book arts, cyanotypes, fiber
art, installations, paintings, printmaking, and sculpture, the artists acknowledge rivers as a fertile
source for creation. Conceived as a way of honoring the Hudson River’s presence for the
Westbeth Gallery and the local West Village neighborhoods, the exhibition invites us to reflect
broadly upon the primacy of rivers as an enduring inspiration for artists in the North and
Southwest.